Magento

New to Magento? Looking for a freelance programmer or developer for your Magento site? Perhaps you are a freelancer looking for a job? Here are my experiences:

You can search for Magento partners from the “Partner” link in the menu above. You also probably saw the job board (top right corner - near log-in). The job board is a good way to go if it is a big job and worth paying the $75. However small jobs won’t be worth paying $75. On the other hand, it is often small jobs that bring the big jobs and therefore it’s a good way for programmers to start.

Then there is Maglance. The problem with Maglance is that out of 164 maglancers, only 2 of them have any feedback from clients! So it takes a lot of fishing around to figure out who you trust and who has the knowledge you need.

There is also another way. That is Elance.com. Lately there has been a lot of job opportunities on elance. I have used Elance a number of times and I just posted another job on Elance here.

To find jobs or providers on Elance, just go to Hire > Search. Type into search bar “Magento” and from there search for providers or jobs. The advantage of Elance is 1) that you have a third party (elance team) to process the payments and to help mediate should there be a conflict (just be sure to always use the PMB) and 2) you can review the provider’s credentials and feedback from other clients. Best of all, it is free to post a job! Strongly recommended!

Anyone else have good solutions? Did anyone have positive results with the Magento job board?

I have had mixed results with the job board, finding work.  For the most part it has worked out well for me.  I only try and get the small jobs, but once the job is done the client usually has more work for me latter on.

Here is another roundabout suggestion of how to find a Magento developer:
Go to http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/member/memberlist/. Here is a list of all the Magento users. Below is a search area. Try a search using terms that are often in the URL or user name of a developer such as “dev” or “solutions”. Next you can run your mouse over the URL’s to see if any URL sounds like a developer’s site. You can also view the member’s profile and take a look at the member’s forum posts. From the posts you can get a feel of how knowledgeable and helpful this person is. Another thing that helps is the fact that the search results are filtered according to how many posts the member has contributed. This means that the members that are more involved in Magento (in the forums) will be listed first.

This is advice for developers also. Have as much information as possible in your magento profile, and participate in the forums.